Gunmen in Police Uniforms Kidnap 5 British Civilians

Wednesday

May 30, 2007 at 5:42 AM

Gunmen wearing police commando uniforms abducted five British civilians from a Finance Ministry complex in Iraq, British officials said.

DAMIEN CAVE

BAGHDAD, May 29 — Gunmen wearing police commando uniforms abducted five British civilians from a Finance Ministry complex on Tuesday, British officials said. They seized a business consultant and his four bodyguards in an attack that revived questions about links between official security forces and criminal militias.

The American military also said that 10 American soldiers died Monday in separate attacks, making May the deadliest month for American troops since November 2004. And in the capital, two car bombs blasted through congested neighborhoods, killing at least 32 people and wounding more than 100, according to an Interior Ministry official.

The abduction occurred just before noon, when gunmen in a convoy of vehicles typically used by the police entered a guarded Finance Ministry complex in eastern Baghdad, took the civilians and left without firing a shot, according to witnesses and Iraqi officials. It was one of the most brazen, coordinated assaults on Western civilians at an Iraqi government building since the war started.

The ease of the attack amplified concerns that elements of Iraq’s government may be playing a more active role in attacking Westerners — or at least allowing attacks to occur.

Last year, high-profile kidnappings by gunmen who appeared to be members of Iraq’s security forces became more common, leading Sunni and American officials to accuse Iraq’s Shiite-led government of using public resources for sectarian violence.

Tuesday’s attack suggested that the same tactics were now being used against Westerners.

At the same time, some American military officials in Baghdad have recently said that a majority of the Iraqi security forces they work with report to militia leaders and cannot be trusted. Commanders in western Baghdad said several roadside bombs aimed at American convoys have recently been found within view of Iraqi checkpoints.

A British Embassy official declined to identify the captives but said the government’s crisis management task force met this afternoon in London to “resolve this as fast as we can.” A second official said that only the five Britons had been taken; initial reports had said that several German advisers were among the kidnapped.

Steve Lunceford, a spokesman for the BearingPoint, a Virginia-based management consulting firm, said one of the kidnap victims worked for the company, which has received contracts in Iraq from the United States Agency for International Development since 2003.

The other four hostages worked for GardaWorld, a Canadian security company with extensive contracts in Iraq, according to a spokesman.

A witness said he saw at least four government-issued S.U.V.’s drive into the compound of the Technology and Information Directorate of the Finance Ministry, past a small group of guards, without being stopped. An Interior Ministry official said the convoy included 40 vehicles. Both said the gunmen abducted the Westerners and fled quickly.

“There was no resistance,” the Interior Ministry official said, suggesting that the Finance Ministry’s guards either knew about the attack or were too intimidated to stop it.

The motive for the attack remained unclear. High-profile kidnappings of Westerners and Iraqis for ransom or propaganda have come in waves, cresting in 2004 and again last year. Roughly 300 foreigners, including civilians from the United States, Japan, Italy, Germany and several other countries have also been kidnapped since the start of the war, according to a Brookings Institution index of attacks.

Thousands of Iraqis, meanwhile, have disappeared.

In the most audacious assault on a government building, dozens of Iraqi employees of the Ministry of Higher Education were abducted in November from the ministry’s headquarters in Baghdad by militiamen dressed in police commando uniforms. Many of victims were never found.

The building that was attacked Tuesday was under Shiite control. The finance minister, Bayan Jabr, is a conservative Shiite whom Sunnis have frequently accused of encouraging sectarian violence.

It was Mr. Jabr, the interior minister until last May, who oversaw the rapid growth of the Iraqi security forces as they were infiltrated by Shiite militias. He is a senior member of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and was once a commander for the party’s militia, the Badr Organization.

Mr. Jabr could not be reached for comment.

The 10 American soldiers who died Monday brought the total number of American deaths this month to 116, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, a Web site that tracks military and civilian casualties. Only two other months since the war started have yielded a higher toll: 137 Americans died in November 2004; 135 were killed that April.

Two of the soldiers died in southern Baghdad when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol, according to an American military statement. The other eight died in Diyala Province, which has been the site of vicious battles between American troops and insurgents.

Six of the eight died from explosions near their vehicles, according to an American military statement. The other two died after their helicopter crashed.

Military officials did not provide additional details of the attacks.

Iraqi security officials in Diyala said gunmen shot down the helicopter around 6 p.m. One official said a group of militants rushed to the helicopter seconds after it crashed and shot and killed the two pilots.

Shootings, bombings and other violence also ripped through the country on Tuesday. In Diyala, gunfire in and near Muqdadiya and Baquba killed at least eight civilians and two militants, the police said. A roadside bomb killed one civilian, and the authorities found 11 bodies throughout the province.

In Baghdad, the authorities found 30 unidentified bodies.

A suicide car bomb exploded in the violent Sunni neighborhood of Amil in the capital, leaving at least 20 people dead and wounding at least 85, an Interior Ministry official said.

A second bomb in a parked bus exploded in a busy shopping area of central Baghdad, killing at least 12 people and wounding 20. Witnesses said a sniper began firing at the survivors minutes later.

In southern Iraq, Moktada al-Sadr, the populist Shiite cleric, condemned the discussions on Monday in Baghdad between American and Iranian officials. He attacked the government of Iran for sitting down “with the occupier and claiming it is for the benefit of Iraqi people and their stability.”

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